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Jeanne L. Allert, M.Ed.
Ellipsis Partners
Baltimore-Washington
Promotional Products International Association
E-Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business
First, a few questions
1. What aspect of your business are you trying to grow?
2. Does “growing your business” mean “generating more business” or
does it mean “doing business better”?
MORE
– Expand customer base (by geography? number? Industry diversity? )
– Expand inventory offering (and make market aware of it)?
– Increase transactions (frequency, repeats, upsell, dollar amount)?
BETTER
– Expand brand awareness
– Improve customer service/responsiveness
– Offer contemporary services
3. Do you have the infrastructure to support the growth you desire?
Agenda
Email Marketing - “PUSH”
• Building & Managing Your Lists
• Refining Your Emails
Website Marketing - “PULL”
• Improving your Site’s Visibility
• Enhancing the Visitor’s Experience
• Learning from your Website
Prentice Hall eMarketing report indicates that
marketers have found online promotions
achieve three to five times higher response
rates than direct mail.
Gathering Customer Intelligence – “ASK”
And a few new tactics on the horizon…
Email Marketing Strategies
Build Your Email Lists
 Blind Email Campaign
 Ask for visitor’s email address on your website
 Offer incentives for online customers to give
you their email addresses.
 Ask your recipients to forward your email onto
their network of contacts
 Provide your call center (receptionist) with
script to ask for email addresses and get opt-in
permission
 Always ask for email addresses on your printed
and Web order forms
 Have a sign-up form on each page of your
website
 Encourage sign-up on signature lines
 Sign-up requests on receipts, invoices,
confirmations
 Footer on Press Releases
Manage Your Lists
 Ask for preferred email address and state what
you will use it for
 Practice Opt-in or Double Opt-in
 Attend to Opt-outs immediately
 Offer a gracious “you’re welcome to come
back”
 Let members manage their own Opt-in and
email address changes via your website
 Use Subject Line to remind recipients to reply
for Double Opt-In
Use Your Email Signature Line
Message Presentation
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Use of branding/imagery
Use of stationery and colors
Do you expect the email to be printed?
What is the likelihood your audience can
support the presentation you’ve created?
How important to have your brand
associated with the content?
Does the graphical treatment lend value to
the message or detract from it?
Wasted Effort?
Timing Your Campaigns
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Consider:
– When do you want them to receive the
email?
– How long does it take for your emails to be
received?
– What offline media might coincide with the
email? (news broadcast, magazine?)
– What are the psychographics (behaviors)
of your readers?
62% of emails opened between Tuesday –
Thursday
80% of emails opened between 5am and 5pm
PST.
News-oriented emails are best (expected)
early in the morning
A high % of SPAM sent during middle of the
night and on weekends; don’t compete with
them
SPAM Management
DEFINITION
Unwanted email, sent in bulk, to unfamiliar audiences for the purposes of
solicitation
INCOMING
• Teach staff how to set up their own filters
• Inform staff what filters are operating at the server level
• Know the difference between “blacklists” and “whitelists” and how to manage those
• Preview pane display = Read
• Outlook 2003 – does not automatically display images in HTML; also offers personal
whitelists and blacklists
• Do you list staff emails on your website ?
ONE IDEA: jallertATellipsispartner.com
ANOTHER IDEA: “type first initial last name @ xyz.com”
• Set up departmental email boxes and manage them
SPAM Management
OUTGOING
• Avoid SPAM-prone words like “free,” “give-away,” or questionable adjectives
• Use a consistent email address for sending
• Use an external email service for large mailings
• Send email in small, irregular batches
• Post your privacy policy on your website
• Train your market to look for your email (and whitelist it)
• Have instructions on your website for whitelisting your emails
Fighting Back !
• Forward "unwanted or deceptive spam" to [email protected]
maintained by the FTC. The data collected is used to prosecute
perpetrators of scam or deceptive advertising
• Cut and paste email header and full text
and submit to www.spamcop.com
• Look up the source of some SPAM
mail by true domain at www.abuse.com
• SPAM’em back
A Good Example for Marketing
Identifying
logo
Engaging
photos
Call to action
Peer testimonial
Personal
tone
Opt-out instructions
SMS (short messaging service) Marketing
Text messaging enables information to be sent to groups of people quickly. The
development of 3G (third generation) and smartphones, which have larger screens
and can play music and video clips, has made multimedia messaging service
(MMS) possible.
Advantages of SMS marketing
• Personal nature of cellphones make SMS marketing a powerful tool.
• Most people take their mobile phones everywhere - effective for time
sensitive messages.
• People tend to read virtually every text they get
Potential disadvantages of SMS marketing
• A maximum 160 characters.
• Get their permission and ensure that your SMS marketing complies with
privacy and data protection rules.
• Required to make it clear who the message is from and commercial
communications must be clearly recognizable as such.
• You need to use a mobile phone company to send out the texts for you.
the amount of money spent on advertising on mobile phones has been small but it has been growing rapidly. In 2005,
advertisers spent $45 million on such messages, and should spend around $150 million in 2006, according to
Ovum Research, which projects that such spending will reach $1.3 billion by 2010."
Web Marketing Strategies
Bring them in
Serve them well
Learn about them
Bring them back
Your Name and its Visibility
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Secure a domain name that is
recognizable, relevant, and
memorable
If feasible, secure domains that are
“too similar” and create a redirect to
your site
Use branded email for staff. Most
consumers don’t interpret free ISPs
as a serious business email address
Optimize your website for Search
Engines
List your site with Web Directories
Promote website on offline
channels, publications,
correspondence and merchandise
Search Engine Optimization
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Set up Tags and Design for Search Engines
Update Metatags based on site stats, organizational changes and seasonality
Pay special attention to the TITLE tag !
Register Your Site
Register with Directories: Yahoo, Google, AOL. Switchboard, CitySearch,
Local Directories, Shopping portals, Chamber of Commerce, etc.
Register your Products
Linking Strategy
Create reciprocal linking relationships with:
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Local teams, organizations, companies,
schools, colleges
(client) Conference or event archives
Suppliers, Distributors, Partners
Product brands
Your clients
Complimentary businesses
Related products or services
Local web calendars
Paid Placements
Google Adwords
• no minimum budget
• choose terms
• pay only for CPC/click-thru
Navigation Options
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Audience Segmentation
Searching
Indexes
Context-Grouping
Site Map
“Ask Jeeves” model
Anchor your brand on each page
Use THEIR language
• Communicate so as to be
understood
• Create website sections
for markets where the
language shifts
dramatically
• Watch search terms to
review “user lexicon”
• Have someone outside
your industry “proofread”
your site
• Don’t “dub-dub-dub”
Test Your Own Transactions
• Be very cognizant of what steps you are
asking the customer to take
• Provide options
• Anticipate errors
• Communicate the PROCESS
• Provide help at all junctures
• Provide immediate confirmation of
transaction
• Be clear on how the customer can follow up
Personalization
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Products, services and communications targeting the individual
Based on robust database rules
Interactivity
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Message Boards
Discussion Forums
Surveys/Polls
Member Networking
Images
Virtual/Interactive
tours
What can the visitor DO on your site?
Offer options for Communicating with you
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Provide a range of options for
communicating with you
Communicate service levels and
turnaround times for those options
Anticipate their questions
Online Tutorials
Instant Messenger/Chat
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Real-time response to customer questions
Requires staffing during “off” hours
Requires minimal technical skills
Aids customer use of the website
Transactions can be recorded/ tracked for
business intelligence
Dedicated Customer Support Page
Site Concierge
• Uses video
animation to
simulate a personal
assistant
• Limited interaction
• Impacted by user’s
desktop
• Impact on 508
compliance
Bulletin/Message Boards
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Encourage your customers to talk about your products online
Regularly mine public boards for postings about your offerings
Periodically search the archives
Monitor boards for opportunities to provide information, resources and links
back to your programs
• Volunteer to moderate a public board
• Seed the conversation with (legitimate) topics that promote your value
Blogs
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Have a purpose and stick to it
Offer real and unique value
Push customers to use it
Blog SPAM danger
eCoupons
• frequent shoppers are rewarded when they reach a certain level of value or
purchases
• shoppers are encouraged to return with an e-coupon towards future purchases
• incentives to encourage customers to purchase immediately rather than waiting
for a better deal or shopping elsewhere
• first time customers are offered special deals in order to help turn them from
browsers into purchasers
• used to encourage
customers to sign up for enewsletters, with the
newsletter helping to
increase sales and build
your customer database
• Coupons usually include a code that the customer is required to enter before they
finalize their order to receive the discount.
Rebate Coupons
• For growing repeat
business
• Make the rebate
meaningful to the
customer
• Be VERY clear about
your offer and what
you will do with their
information
• Test and adjust
What’s Important to Learn about your Online Customer
Classic Market Segments
Web-Relevant Characteristics
• Age
→ Technology Access/Reception
• Gender
→ Technology Reliance
• Income
→ Motivation
• Education
→ Time
• Geography
→ Past Web performance
• Industry
Market Intelligence Gained By Asking
• Interval Surveys / Polls
• Constant Survey
• Focus Groups
Market Intelligence Gained By Profiles
• Customer profile forms
• Interest Inventory
• Preferences
Market Intelligence Gained By Tracking
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Forums
Discussion Boards
Email Response
Chats
IM usage
Web Stats
M o st R e q u e ste d P a g e s
aboutus .htm
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Vis itor Ses s ions
jo b s . h t m
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ev ents .htm
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04/02 04/04 04/06 04/08 04/10 04/12 04/14 04/16 04/18 04/20 04/22 04/24 04/26 04/28 04/30
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M o n 0 4 / 0 1 / 2 0 0 2 - Tu e 0 4 / 3 0 / 2 0 0 2 (1 M o n t h S c a le )
e llip s is p a rt n e rs . c o m
Remember those questions
1. What aspect of your business are you trying to grow?
– Be clear about your business goals
2. Does “growing your business” mean “generating more business” or
does it mean “doing business better”?
– Consider technology investments in both areas
3. Do you have the infrastructure to support the growth you desire?
– Better to do less and do it well than try to do more and fail
SUMMARY
EMAIL MARKETING
– Requires ongoing diligence to build and maintain your lists
– May have to train your market to be on the lookout for your emails
– Doesn’t have to be sizzle; should be mostly steak
– Track performance and adjust
WEB MARKETING
– Be active about bringing them to your site (“out of sight, out of mind”)
– Design from the users’ perspective
– Create opportunities for interaction/engagement
– Anticipate their needs and provide for them
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
– Ask them!
– Mine your data
– Learn and adjust